Joseph Smith Bio

[Coreyb]

Has anyone here read Martha Bradley's new biography of Joseph Smith, Glorious in Persecution? It's new, not sure how new, and is supposed to be the third volume in a three part biography of the prophet with the first two volumes still awaiting publication by Signature Books. I had looked forward to reading them but since this has been released I haven't heard any buzz about it anywhere on the biofeedback, or any good reviews.

[cinepro]

Looks interesting.  It looks like each volume might be written by different authors, covering different periods of Joseph's life?  Here's the 1805 - 1830 one by Richard S. Van Wagoner:

http://signaturebooks.com/natural-born-seer/

Edited September 5, 2016 by cinepro

[Jeanne]

This is interesting...I would love to read Van Wagoner's  book on the town of Lehi.  Thanks for the link. 

[Nevo]

3 hours ago, Coreyb said:

Has anyone here read Martha Bradley's new biography of Joseph Smith, Glorious in Persecution? It's new, not sure how new, and is supposed to be the third volume in a three part biography of the prophet with the first two volumes still awaiting publication by Signature Books. I had looked forward to reading them but since this has been released I haven't heard any buzz about it anywhere on the biofeedback, or any good reviews.

I've read a few chapters of the Kindle version. I'll go back to it one of these days. It's not a page-turner like the Brodie and Hill biographies. It's an academic treatment and reads like one. The author has recently stated that her purpose was to "use theory to make a fresh interpretation of [Joseph Smith's] life." And that is exactly what she does. Here's an excerpt from the Introduction:

Quote

The way Joseph fashioned his story about Zion had profound implications for the Mormon people—how they behaved in the spaces they created, and what those spaces meant to them. As he told his story of Zion, Joseph filled it with interesting and potent characters—Church leaders, Saints, and enemies—each a guardian or defiler of sacred space. These characters played their roles wherever they appeared: in the temple grove, in new converts, in the upper room of Joseph’s red brick store, on the unfinished walls of the Nauvoo temple, on the banks of the Mississippi River, in the comings and goings of missionaries, in the physical labor on Illinois’s farms, in political maneuverings in the state capitol, in the outrage of exposés and denunciations, in the privacy of bedrooms. Joseph built conflict into the narrative as well as crisis and resolution. His stance as prophet created a unique vantage point that privileged his information. This awareness enhanced both the story and the way it played out.

Through his characterizations and descriptions of settings and meanings, his particular emphasis or imagery, his narrative shaped how people reacted. As converts became Mormons, they learned about Joseph’s role, identified with him, and were shaped by him. His life expressed realities that they believed were true about God. In the process of formation of identity, “the individual keeps ‘talking back,’” Berger says, “to the world that formed him and thereby continues to maintain the latter as reality.” The raw material for the broader narrative of Zion came from the real world. Cultural geographer Yi-Fu Tuan’s study Space and Place describes such narrative places as “mythical space.” He suggests that there are two kinds of space: one is pragmatic and empirically known, the other is the “spatial component of a world view, a conception of localized values within which people carry off their practical activities.” 

Through selection and emphasis, Joseph wove a narrative that told the Saints what to remember. It was a narrative filled with powerful memories, deep fears, passionate hopes, intense angers, visionary dreams, and a profound sense of space. This is not to say that the events in Joseph’s story were untrue, but their retellings reflected a series of strategic rhetorical choices. Joseph’s narrative blended a past of conversion and persecution with a present of restoring the ancient order and a future of millennial hopes. A belief in Zion rendered Joseph powerful and layered his encouragement to build homes and towns with mythic gravity.

I suggest in this work that ritual carried Joseph into an anomic state that gave him, on occasion, a taste of heaven’s “potentialities,” to borrow a term from anthropologist Victor Turner. I am not the first to propose this approach, but I make it a central paradigm for understanding why Joseph was willing to step away from fact-based “truth” in favor of “truths” composed of elaborate and subtle secrets, codes, and subterfuges. This second kind of “truth” covered the practice of plural marriage, the political Council of Fifty, Joseph’s anointing as earthly “king,” and other developments that existed sub rosa. As Joseph constructed a new world of ostensibly ancient ritual models, he ushered the Church into that same state of anomie.

If that all makes good sense to you, you'll enjoy the book. If you've been waiting for a book that looks at Joseph Smith's masculinity in the context of "the gendered experience of nineteenth-century manhood" or one that analyzes the temple in terms of liminality and the numinous, then this is for you. 

Edited September 5, 2016 by Nevo

[Ham Clam]

She did a book event for Benchmark books. 

[Rivers]

Is Martha Bradley LDS?

Edited September 6, 2016 by Rivers

[readstoomuch]

She is LDS and previously taught at BYU.  Her bio is on Amazon and I remember her from her coeditor days at Dialogue.

[Calm]

She is currently with Signature, right?

[Calm]

There is at least one review out there...trying to remember where I saw it...can't.  Sure to find it if googled.  The reviewer was disappointed she relied so heavily on the History of the Church given there is the JSP project as well as Vogel's set of documents and commentary, especially since the aim was to write it from Joseph's perspective and not others of him.  I didn't finish the review, it just caught my eye because of this thread, but I think it was still thumbs up even with the reservation.

[hope_for_things]

7 hours ago, Calm said:

There is at least one review out there...trying to remember where I saw it...can't.  Sure to find it if googled.  The reviewer was disappointed she relied so heavily on the History of the Church given there is the JSP project as well as Vogel's set of documents and commentary, especially since the aim was to write it from Joseph's perspective and not others of him.  I didn't finish the review, it just caught my eye because of this thread, but I think it was still thumbs up even with the reservation.

http://juvenileinstructor.org/review-glorious-in-persecution/

[Coreyb]

On 9/5/2016 at 6:38 PM, Ham Clam said:

She did a book event for Benchmark books. 

Thanks for this, I always forget to check benchmarks YouTube channel. After watching it I think it will be something I am interested in reading. I have heard of this concept of liminality with regards to Mormon ritual  before, maybe from from Sam Brown on a podcast  somewhere? I don't know much about sociological theory so perhaps I'll learn sumthin.